Rebecca Ryan is the founder of Next Generation Consulting, a firm that helps clients engage the next generation at work, and beyond. In 2007, Rebecca became a 2EO, with responsibilities for sales, marketing and positioning. Ryan summarized her firm’s research in her 2007 book, Live First, Work Second: Getting Inside the Minds of the Next Generation.

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	The Four Day Week: Lessons Learned From Taking Fridays Off by Rebecca Ryan - Feb, 2010 In January 2010, we shrank our work week from five days to four, giving everyone Fridays off. The idea was born of economic necessity; Fridays off seemed like a way to give something back to our teammates in exchange for the salary sacrifices they were willing to make. Our teammates lov...
	Three Ways to Tame Your Email (and get back in the zone) by Rebecca Ryan - Feb, 2010 Since so much email is poorly contructed, it becomes our job as recipients to distill the meaning of the email. (Am I the only person who’s annoyed that anyone can send me an email, and then it’s my job to figure out what the hell they want?) Email’s not going away, so we may as well l...
	Five Ways to Hack Your Work So You Can Have a Life by Rebecca Ryan - Jan, 2010 Hack #1: Curb your (email) enthusiasm. No one gets promoted for the number of emails they send. In the “time waster” category, email earns top honors. (Facebook is close behind.) Engineers at Intel studied the impact of email interruptions and found they cost over a billion dollars a ye...
	17 Questions - Are Employees Depressed? by Rebecca Ryan - Dec, 2009 “He who runs behind truck is exhausted, he who runs in front of truck is tired.” - Anonymous The Great Recession has two victims: employees who have been laid-off and are chasing the truck (a job), and employees who still have their jobs and are pumpin’ their legs like crazy, trying to...
	Extra Effort Required To Attract and Retain 25-34 Year Olds: A Tale of Ten Cities by Rebecca Ryan - Dec, 2009 A study published for the International Regions Benchmarking Consortium has once again underscored the urgency for cities to develop a solid talent strategy. The study confirms a great deal of existing research - the people most likely to migrate are young, single, and college-educated....
	Nine Tips to Reach the Next Gen with Email by Rebecca Ryan - Sep, 2009 Even if you’ve embraced Twitter and Facebook, email is still a potent tool to reach young professionals. Here are 9 tips to get it right. 1. Emails that are sent on Mondays have the highest open and click-through rates, followed by Tuesdays. The later on in the week you send your email...
	Catching People at Their Best by Rebecca Ryan - Jan, 2009 I once got a lovely email from one of my staff members. Her son was sick, and she chose to work from home so that she could look after him. In her email, she thanked me for 'birthing' NGC and making it the kind of place where people can do their work from anywhere. Felt good. Really go...
	They Asked if They Could Have 5 Minutes... by Rebecca Ryan - Jan, 2009 It seemed nonchalant. One of the YPs in the audience came up to me after my presentation and asked, "Could we just have a couple minutes of your time? We'd like to talk to you about something." It had that cryptic, keep-this-on-the-DL tone to it. I was intrigued. We sat down. There ...
	Letting the Cards Decide by Rebecca Ryan - Jan, 2009 I was on a flight from Madison to Washington D.C. recently. It’s an hour and forty minute flight, and I’d planned to get some work done…right after I finished my game of solitaire on my iPod. You know how this goes… One game became two. Then three. Then I started negotiating, “If I go i...
	Vote for the Arts by Rebecca Ryan - Apr, 2004 Last month, I talked about the connection between Noodling and Doodling, that human development is economic development. This week I want to make the case for the arts and the important role they play in the life and death of cities. This year, I have the privilege of helping Milwaukee...
	Noodle, Doodle.. by Rebecca Ryan - Mar, 2004 Two years ago at a leadership café at Marquette University, I heard Dr. Daniel Kim say, “Human development is economic development.” As an economist, I’ve mastered the laws of supply and demand, price elasticity and I look forward to Tuesdays with my Morrie, Alan Greenspan. But what Dr. Ki...
	So you want to start a Young Professionals Network? by Rebecca Ryan - Mar, 2004 Have you gotten religion about how important YP networks are to attracting and retaining talent to your community? If so, you're part of a growing consortium of cities doing so. I frequently get asked HOW TO do this. Following is a short list of Do's and Don’ts, followed by a list of Y...
	Revolutionary Leadership by Rebecca Ryan - Feb, 2004 Had Andy Law been born in Colonial America some 235 years ago, this Next Generation Leader would likely have been in the vanguard of our effort to establish a new democratic form of government that represented the interests of all its citizens. Had he been in France a few years later, he m...
	Geek Chic by Rebecca Ryan - Jan, 2004 Where are all the geeks? I recently attended one state’s well-publicized “high tech” events. Not a single unkempt microserf in sight. Lawyers and suits galore, but no untucked, bespectacled, brilliant digi-geeks. If geeks HAD shown up, they would’ve felt awkwardly outcast. Most people ...
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